Woman sacked for deleting app that allowed work to track her

A WOMAN claims she was fired from her job for removing an app from her phone that she says allowed her employers to track her every movement, even when she was away from work.

Myrna Arias, who was a California-based employee for a money transfer service called Intermex, says that her boss fired her from her job when she removed the app from her work-issued phone. Before then, it allowed the company to monitor where she was at all times using a GPS function.

The case says that, after researching the software, Arias asked her manager about the app, and he "admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she installed the app on her phone". Arias said that she had no problem being monitored when she was at work, but that being tracked during non-work hours was an invasion of her privacy.

The software, called Xora, is used to monitor the work of employees in the field. It tracks employees are so that company can use the information for timesheets and mileage claims, among other things.

Arias claims that her employer expected her to "tolerate" the "intrusion". Despite this, Arias deleted the app. She was fired soon after, the lawsuit says.

"This intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person," the filing says.